Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

Language Policy and Planning 165
simply acting as implementers of language changes willed by others. Even
straightforward implementation of LP as determined by curriculum
bodies or ministries of education involves teachers in LP activity.
However, the relationship between teaching and LP runs deeper. The pervasiveness
of communication in human social relations (e.g. commerce
and public life) means that teachers are invested with LP obligations and
involvements endemic to their professional practice.
Restrictive defi nitions of LP limited to formal decision making and
resource allocation miss how apparently routine practices of classroom
interaction can serve as models of language use for learners. As citizens,
teachers may or may not engage in responses to language infl uences originating
outside of education institutions, but as to their professional
endeavours, all teaching indirectly, and language and literacy teaching
directly, are acts of implementation of existing LP and, more deeply, acts
of LP in an ongoing dynamic and dialogical way (Bakhtin, 1981; Dentith,
1995). In refl ections on literature and communication, Bakhtin proposed
a view of conversation and its central role in recalling past things said,
and anticipating reply, which is critical to this way of seeing LP. Linked to
Neustupny’s insight that ordinary language use, self-monitoring and
correction involve micro-LP, we can see the classroom as a process of
conversational interaction in which forms of language are the focus of
intense engagement (see Jaspers, this volume).
Personal language expression, how we speak and perceive ourselves to
speak, is monitored, and as we notice what we say, we may correct, adjust
and modulate our expression to enhance meaning or to project intended
identities. We are all engaged in continual LP as we converse, and this
personal programme of planning our subjective self is located on a continuum
with the collective, public action of institutions. A literacy teacher
constructs the capabilities of learners in the codes, modes and meanings of
the various literacy resources which society, the education system, school
and parental expectations require of learners (Lo Bianco & Freebody, 2001).
In stratifi ed multilingual and multiliterate contexts, school practices give
effect to decisions that must be made about what to teach and how to
teach. Some of these choices confi rm existing practice of the wider society,
some resist and some produce change. Curriculum content and pedagogy
are the result of choices; that is selections made from what curriculum
content and pedagogical practices are available and possible. The totality
of curriculum content and pedagogy choices ultimately constitute an
enacted language and literacy policy.
Classroom language as LP
In addition to curriculum and pedagogy choices, a dialogical approach
to language suggests that classroom language functions as LP, in at least
four ways, focusing here mostly on teacher talk.